But the team is facing resistance from neighboring residents, who say the project should be downscaled and include more parking spaces.

The Harrison Apartments building is planned as a replacement for the former Corvallis General Hospital structure, which has unreinforced masonry and asbestos inside. The building is owned by Samaritan Health Services; it selected Project Ecological Development to redevelop the site.

“The building is old and vacant, and there’s not really a reuse for it,” Project Ecological Development partner Anyeley Hallova said.

Hallova said the site is ideal for student housing because it is about two blocks from Oregon State University, on Northwest Harrison Boulevard – a major Corvallis street with transit access.

Plans call for a 104,947-square-foot building featuring 91 units with either two, three or four bedrooms. The development would include 179 parking spaces and 204 bike stalls. A LEED gold rating is being targeted, Hallova said.

However, the College Hill neighborhood association recently appeared before the city’s planning commission to present its opposition to the project planned near the national historic district.

“As it currently stands, even if it met the code requirements technically, which we dispute, we would see a minimum of 100 cars looking to park in adjacent neighborhoods,” said Gary Angelo, president of the neighborhood association. “Our neighborhood is already dealing with a severe parking problem, as are the neighbors to the north.”

Hallova said that apartment building management will discourage residents from parking motor vehicles. Also, the bike parking spaces are intended to attract students who rely on alternative transportation, she added.

However, Angelo is skeptical that such a plan would work. He said that many students who live in his neighborhood and others who live closer to campus bring their cars to Corvallis when they’re attending the university.

“The current owners and managers of the property may very well be successful themselves at encouraging students to not bring cars to campus, but we don’t know how long these owners or managers are going to own these properties,” Angelo said, adding that in the future, another owner may not follow suit.

College Hill residents also are concerned about the proposed scale of the apartment building, Angelo said. The hospital building that will be demolished is 35 feet high; however, the Harrison Apartments would be four stories, include a gabled roof and stand 51 feet.

“It’s larger than anything in the adjacent neighborhoods,” Angelo said. “It dwarfs not only the houses but the adjacent fraternities and sororities.”

Angelo said College Hill residents would prefer a project appropriate for the small-scale residential area and able to provide housing for not only students, but also families and the elderly.

Anyeley Hallova is a partner with Project Ecological Development, which is developing the Harrison Apartments in Corvallis. The planned building would hold 91 units with two, three or four bedrooms each. Also, 179 motor vehicles parking spaces and 204 bicycle parking spaces would be constructed. (Photo by Sam Tenney/DJC)

Project Ecological Development is attempting to address design concerns, Hallova said. Residents expressed concerns about the planned vertical wood siding, which she said can easily be changed to horizontal, with some brick intermixed as well.

The ZGF Architects team is striving to design a building that fits within the context, ZGF associate Heidi Bertman said.

“Creating a pedestrian environment was one of the main focus points during design,” she said. “On the ground level, we pull back from the street a little bit and each unit on the ground floor has a front porch. It’s a long building, but it’s bent or kinked at places to reduce that feeling of scale.”

Bertman said she and ZGF principal Gene Sandoval are passionate about the project, which is one of ZGF’s first midsize apartment efforts and one of its first in the Corvallis area.

Apartments present attractive prospects for developers in Corvallis these days, because OSU’s enrollment is increasing. A limited number of sites for new projects and an often difficult city approval process have made the apartment market even tighter, Hallova said.

After a long hearing before the Corvallis planning commission last week, it postponed deliberations until another meeting Jan. 4. In the coming days, Hallova said the project team will decide if and how it would adjust the project to meet the neighborhood association’s requests.

If the project were to move forward as the team anticipates, the building would open in 2013, Bertman said.

4 comments

I live within decent biking distance of school so I bike daily and keep my car parked in my driveway. Although I do know a huge amount of students who live far from campus so they drive and park their cars in those neighborhood streets and either walk or bike from that point to campus so it isn’t just the students already living in that area. I would never move into that area so that I am totally exempt from ever having that problem.

I happen to have gone to OSU. I know exactly where you are talking about and in no way do I dispute the description that you put forth. In fact I know it to be very true. What I would say is that first they are proposing a 2:3 parking ratio. Secondly and more importantly is that this is exactly the type of housing that is needed to help alleviate the parking problem as you described in your neighborhood. housing that is close enough to campus to where you can not need to drive a car or even bring one to Corvallis for that matter. I would hazard to guess that most of the people parking in your neighborhood live farther from campus then these proposed apartments. If you want a more livable city having more walkable housing options close to campus should be a key priority.

I’m not sure if Mr. Bierma lives in a college town but as an OSU faculty who lives in the College Hill neighborhood I can offer this anectodal piece of evidence. We live in a purely residential neighborhood with no student housing on our block. It is an old neighborhood with alleys, one car garages, etc. Each day by 9am our street is completely full with OSU related parking (students and staff). However, by 5 pm or so, we could park in front of our house.
One of our neighbors moved out, couldn’t sell their house, and rented it to 5 college students (boys). They have 5 vehicles plus each of their girlfriends appears to have a car, so now we can’t park in our neighborhood even at night.! The past weeks when the students have been gone, the street is completely empty except for 1 car from each neighborhood house. It is refreshing to come home from driving my daughter to swim practice and not have to fight for a parking space….but I know this is only a temporary Christmas present.

So Mr. Bierma, don’t think these poor college kids are as poor as you think. The car ratio may not be 1:1, but it’s pretty high.

100 extra cars yeah right. that’s amusing every person in the apartments has a car which in no way would be true. there parking ratio seems pretty perfect for the college town demographic of Corvallis and is in a great location to not need a car.